There are days I don't even feel anxious — not in the shaking, breathless way we've been taught to recognize it.
There are days where I just feel... off. Like I’m floating slightly outside of myself. Hyperaware, yet emotionally unavailable. Unable to answer simple questions. I’ll cancel plans, avoid messages, and get irritated by small sounds. I’ll be scrolling, eating, cleaning — and somehow, still running.
But lately, I’ve been wondering:
Am I actually anxious?
Or is my anxiety just speaking in a language I never learned how to translate?
Maybe anxiety isn’t always fear. Maybe it’s grief in disguise.
Maybe it’s all the unsaid things — the swallowed words, the unresolved tension, the goodbyes I never got to say — rising to the surface, needing somewhere to go.
Maybe anxiety is the cry your body lets out when you keep forcing it to be silent.
No one ever taught us that emotional repression has symptoms.
That you can feel anxious because you're heartbroken.
That you can feel anxious because your boundaries are being stepped on but you’re too scared to say, “That’s enough.”
That anxiety can be a sign that you’re not in the wrong life, but in the wrong room.
What if anxiety is your body’s desperate attempt to finally be heard?
To say: “I’m overwhelmed.”
To say: “This is too much, and I don’t know how to tell anyone without sounding dramatic.”
To say: “I’m tired of shrinking, of being polite, of pretending to be okay.”
We’ve normalized emotional silence for so long that when the body finally finds a way to make noise — through tight chests, sweaty palms, racing thoughts — we call it a malfunction. But what if it’s communication? What if it’s protest?
Have you asked your anxiety what it’s trying to say?
Maybe you’re not anxious.
Maybe you’re grieving who you had to become just to survive.
Maybe you’re hurting in a language no one around you speaks.
Maybe you’re exhausted from being the strong one, the funny one, the always-available one.
And maybe — just maybe — your body is asking you to listen, not fix.
Because healing isn’t always about stopping the anxiety.
Sometimes it’s about letting it finish its sentence.
Sometimes it’s about sitting with it, not as a threat, but as a messenger.
So I’ll ask you, the way I’ve been asking myself lately:
Is it anxiety — or is it the only way your soul knows how to beg for softness?
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